Intel and Azure
Explore secure, flexible, and high-performing joint solutions from Microsoft and Intel.
Microsoft and Intel build on long-standing co-engineering efforts to enable differentiated services within Azure. By combining innovative software and services with cutting-edge hardware, the Intel and Microsoft partnership delivers state-of-the-art-edge to cloud solutions for Industrial IoT and computer vision edge AI, SAP on Azure, high-performance computing (HPC), confidential computing, hybrid cloud, Microsoft SQL Server, AI, analytics, and more.
Learn more about intelligent edge to cloud solutions with Intel powered edge devices and cloud software and solutions for Azure.
Hybrid by design
Develop and deploy where you want. Extend Azure on-premises by using Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack HCI with Intel Xeon® Scalable processors and Intel solid state drives (SSDs). And, use Azure Stack Edge with Intel Xeon® Scalable processors, Intel field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and Intel SSDs for fast and local inferencing.
"This collaboration builds upon a long history of innovation to create a strong foundation for delivering best-in-class cloud services for customers and businesses across the enterprise. We continue to work closely together to maximize technology and business opportunities for our customers."
Jason Grebe, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Platform and Technologies Group, Intel
Intel-based Azure Virtual Machines
Whether you're looking for support for an enterprise SAP environment or mission-critical performance for Windows Server and SQL Server, you’ll find support for a broad range of Intel-based Azure workloads. For compute-intensive needs such as AI, machine learning, and other HPC workloads, browse a wide portfolio of Intel Xeon®-based Azure VMs—including those featuring 3rd Generation Intel Xeon® Platinum 8370C (Ice Lake) processors.
| Target workloads | Azure VM instance type | Intel Processor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Dev/test, low-traffic web servers, code repositories, and others | Entry-level A-series | |
| Applications not requiring the full performance of the CPU continuously | Burstable B-series | |
| E-commerce systems, desktop virtualization, CRM, application servers, and others | General purpose D-series | |
| Blockchain secure enclaves | Confidential computing DC-series | |
| Memory-intensive enterprise apps, SAP HANA workloads, large relational databases | Memory-optimized E- and M-series | |
| Compute-intensive workloads, EDA, network appliances, batch processes, and others | Compute-optimized F-series | |
| High-performance computing | Big Compute H series | Xeon® E5-2667 v3 |
Workloads
SAP on Azure
SAP on Azure offers a high-performance, scalable infrastructure for SAP HANA—with VMs that offer up to 12 TB of RAM per VM and purpose-built, bare-metal instances with up to 24 TB of RAM, powered by Intel Xeon® processors. Spin up highly scalable SAP HANA-certified systems on Azure in minutes, across the trusted Azure global infrastructure of 60+ regions.
Additional resources:
Find SAP HANA VMs available by Azure region
HPC workloads on Azure
Improve performance, MPI scalability, and cost efficiency for HPC workloads on Azure. Azure HC-series VMs, powered by Intel Xeon® Scalable processors and AVX-tuned applications, enable high-performance computing that’s optimized for large-scale, computationally intensive applications.
Additional resources:
Read HPC documentation for Azure HC-series VMs
Read the article on cutting-edge HPC technology with Azure HC-series VMs
Azure confidential computing
Confidential computing on Azure enables new scenarios, such as multiparty machine learning, helps strengthen security for blockchain, and enhances always-encrypted technology. Building on Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX), it delivers added protections for data while it’s being processed in the cloud. Intel SGX is a tool that enables developers to better protect their most sensitive data and application code in-memory within an encrypted enclave that’s even protected from the cloud provider and low-level system processes.
Additional resources:
Learn more about Azure confidential computing
AI on Azure
Accelerate the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle with an enterprise-grade service for simplifying the building, training, and deployment of machine learning models. Build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly and cost-effectively with Azure Machine Learning and powerful Intel CPU and FPGA compute resources. Create and accelerate model inferencing across Intel hardware using Azure Machine Learning and ONNX Runtime, an open-source project founded by Microsoft and supported by Intel.
Additional resources:
Build business-critical machine learning models at scale with Azure Machine Learning
Learn more about machine learning optimization with ONNX Runtime
Bring the latest innovation to your solutions
Get more speed, reliability, and intelligent capabilities to get your solutions to market faster with joint-engineering architecture and cloud services from the Azure and Intel partnership. Plus, find flexibility in sizing, performance, and cost across any workload—Intel Xeon® processors are available across all Azure Virtual Machines.
Explore Intel's data-centric portfolio with:
Intel Xeon® processors for Azure compute and storage
Intel OptaneTM DC persistent memory
Intel field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)
Intel ethernet products
Intel solid state drives (SSDs)
Intel silicon photonics 100G PSM4
Intel open-source machine learning frameworks and libraries
Intel Clear Linux Project
Modernize your mission-critical workloads
Foster innovation within your organization, keep your customers happy, and stay ahead of the competition. Learn how to begin migrating your most important systems and apps to the cloud with proven recommendations and best practices—direct from Microsoft and Intel.
Intel in Azure Marketplace
Take a look at other partner technologies that run on Intel.
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BigDL makes it easier to develop deep learning applications as standard Spark programs, using Scala or Python and then to run those applications on existing Spark or Hadoop clusters without expensive, specialized hardware. Apache Spark enables applications to seamlessly scale across Intel Xeon® processor–based nodes on a massive scale, and it delivers extraordinary performance across the Xeon® processor–based infrastructure.
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Analytics Zoo is an open-source project that seamlessly unites Spark, TensorFlow, Keras, and BigDL programs into an integrated pipeline. The pipeline can transparently scale out to a large Hadoop/Spark cluster for distributed training or inference.
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This release enables developers to quickly prototype by reducing complexity associated with integrating multiple software components. The stack includes highly tuned software components across the operating system (Clear Linux OS), a deep learning framework (TensorFlow and others), deep learning libraries (Intel Math Kernel Library for Deep Neural Networks), and other software components.
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An extension of the Ubuntu version of Microsoft data science VMs, this data science VM comes with Python environments optimized for deep learning on Intel Xeon® Processors. These environments include open-source deep learning frameworks with an Intel MKL-DNN backend for optimal performance on Xeon® Processors. These environments require no changes to existing code and accelerate deep learning training and inference.
Partners: Grow your cloud business
Gain a deeper understanding of customer cloud needs, identify opportunities to be more profitable with cloud solutions, and get marketing and technical support to grow your success. The Cloud Solution Provider program gives you the building blocks—including technical enablement, demand generation funds, and go-to-market incentives—to expand your cloud business.